CFC vs. CFM (Best Practices)

Best practices is a matter of opinion. My opinion is that simplicity is a virtue and that one should keep everything as simple as possible.

cfm templates are simpler than cfc's so, unless there is a reason to use cfc's, don't. My reasons to use cfc's are:

1. I consider the code to be re-useable. (by the way, cfc's are not the only way to re-use code)

2. I want the code to be available from outside Cold Fusion (as in the cfc is being used as a webservice).

ddks2 wrote:
> First of all the CFM vs. CFC. Coming from the OO world it seems that the CFC
> are to be used for entity classes and controller classes and the CFM is
> basically the presentation class. Can someone confirm this is the appropriate
> usage and understanding. Also any other input around this would be very helpful.

This is a very common approach, but one is by no means constrained to do
so. If this is of interest to you, you would be well advised to check
out some of the OO|Frameworks initiatives in the ColdFusion world. Some
of the biggest are 'Model Glue', 'Mach II' and 'FuseBox'. These are all
MVC frameworks that make extensive use of components.

One of the best|worst [Depends largely on one's view point] features of
ColdFusion is that it does not advocate or force any particular
development methodologies such as OO vs Procedural.

>
> Secondly CFReports vs. FlashPaper. I am not sure here but would appreciate
> how/when these two should be used.

This is not a 'versus' as I understand your statement. CFReports is an
ability to deliver print friendly content to clients outside of the HTML
standard. It consists of two parts, the server component that uses the
<cfreport...> tag to access ColdFusion CFR files OR a small subset of
Crystal Report RPT files. The server then uses this file and generates
content to deliver to the client.

The second part is the 'Report Builder' which is a first generation,
graphical, banded report, windows application used to build CFR files
that can be used with the above <cfreport...> tag.

The ColdFusion report file has the capability to generate either PDF or
FlashPaper output to be delivered to the client. Which one chooses
depends on what you desire your clients to use to view the content.